'Victoria's Biodiversity

– Our Living Wealth'

Published by the Department of Natural Resources and Environment

8 Nicholson Street, East Melbourne, Victoria 3002

This publication is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for private study, research, criticism or review allowed under the Copyright Act 1968, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright holder.

ISBN 0 7306 6769 3

Project co-ordinator – David Meagher

Design and production – O2 Design

Film & printing – D & D Printing

Printed on recycled paper to help conserve our natural environment

Contents

Foreword 2

Introduction 3

The Past 4

The Future 5

Natural Ecosystems

The Alps 6

Grasslands 8

Heathlands 10

The Mallee 12

Dry Forests and Woodlands 14

Wet Forests and Rainforests 16

Inland Waters and Wetlands 18

The Coast 20

Intertidal Rocky Shores 22

Subtidal Rocky Reefs 24

Seagrass Beds 26

Beaches and Soft Substrates 28

Pelagic 30

Human-created Ecosystems

Living Areas 32

Agricultural Areas 34

Foreword

Biodiversity conservation is a vital component of the Victorian Government’s long-term strategy for improving the quality of life for all Victorians. ‘Biodiversity’ is a relatively new word, but in essence it means the natural diversity of all life: the sum of all our native species of flora and fauna, the genetic variation within them, their habitats, and the ecosystems of which they are an integral part.

It is this biological heritage that Victoria’s Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act seeks to maintain and enhance, because it is essential for our economic, cultural, social and spiritual well-being. Whether we live in metropolitan areas, regional towns or rural areas, our biodiversity assets and their conservation and management are a critically important element in our quality of life.

Victoria’s Biodiversity – Our Living Wealth is the first of three documents that together form the Victorian Government’s strategy for conserving biodiversity in this State.

The second document in the series, Victoria’s Biodiversity - Sustaining our Living Wealth, describes the legal, economic and social parameters which determine how biodiversity conservation will be implemented.

The third part of the biodiversity strategy, Victoria’s Biodiversity – Directions in Management, provides details of the biodiversity in each of Victoria’s bioregions, and outlines the management responses required to protect, enhance and restore them.

Victoria’s Biodiversity – Our Living Wealth, and the strategy as a whole, will encourage Victorians to better understand and appreciate our rich and diverse biological heritage, and to take an active part in its conservation.

Jeff Kennett

Premier

Marie Tehan

Minister for Conservation

and Land Management

Introduction

Australians are the custodians of some of the most diverse ecosystems on the planet. Our continent is one of the world’s 12 biologically ‘megadiverse’ regions, with a high proportion of endemic species — those that are found nowhere else in the world. For example, 93% of our marsupial species and 88% of our native rodents are endemic. Victoria’s land area supports a wider range of broad ecosystems than any area of a similar size in Australia: alpine, mallee, grasslands and grassy woodlands, forests, heathlands and heathy woodlands, inland waters and estuaries, and coasts. These ecosystems have evolved over many thousands of years as a result of the effects of variations in geology, geomorphology, rainfall and climate on the flora and fauna present in ‘Australia’ when ancient Gondwana separated into the modern continental land masses. The uplifting of the southern highlands around 3 million years ago and the subsequent long period of erosion, stream-building and deposition, provided the conditions for the development of the diversity of terrestrial ecosystems now present in Victoria.

Victoria’s marine ecosystems occupy the shallow margins of the northern edge of Bass Strait. At its limit (three nautical miles offshore) the water depth varies from 30 m to just over 100 m. Many of the features of the current coastline and sea floor reflect the cumulative effects of processes that began with the breaking up of Gondwanaland 50 million years ago, especially changes in sea level over the last 100,000 years. The 30 or more bays, inlets and estuaries along the coast were formed by the inundation of coastal river valleys after the end of the last Ice Age. The western Victorian coast bears the full brunt of the southern ocean storms and experiences some of the highest wave energy in the world. The eastern coast is sheltered from these storms by Tasmania and the shallow waters and islands of Bass Strait, and receives some of the warmer currents that flow south along the eastern Australian sea board. Victoria’s natural ecosystems support at least 3140 native species of vascular plants, 900 lichens, 750 mosses and liverworts, 111 mammals, 447 birds, 46 freshwater and 600 marine fish, 133 reptiles, 33 amphibians, and an untold number of invertebrates, fungi and algae. This richness — in the number of different ecosystems and different species, and the genetic variety they exhibit — is what we call biodiversity. It is a scientific, cultural, spiritual and economic inheritance that is distinctly Victorian, and one that we must conserve and manage for future generations.

The Past

The arrival of people on the Australian continent across the northern land bridges from Asia tens of thousands of years ago heralded the beginning of human-induced changes in the Australian landscape. The arrival of Europeans in the 18th century and the consequent urban development, extensive clearing for agriculture, and forestry, brought vast and sometimes adverse changes to the continent, but it took nearly 200 years to appreciate fully the extent of the change. As the perspective of the new Australians developed, the knowledge and sense of value and place increased the appreciation of our continent’s unique biodiversity.

In Victoria, this changing perspective has been at the heart of important government and community initiatives. The establishment of the Land Conservation Council in 1972 enabled the systematic development of a comprehensive, integrated land-use system, including a parks and reserves network that today covers 16% of Victoria’s land area. And community-based conservation programs such as Landcare, Land for Wildlife and Botanic Guardians have succeeded in arresting much land degradation and protecting threatened species and their habitat through local community action.

The Wildlife Act, enacted in 1975, recognised the importance of protecting native wildlife and controlling exotic species. But the establishment of the Flora and Fauna Guarantee in 1988, with its legislative base, went further: it marked not only the formal recognition of the importance of protecting native species, but also the need to protect entire communities and manage processes that could threaten their survival.

By 1997, twenty communities and over 350 species had been given special protection, and 22 processes had been declared to be potentially threatening.

The Future

Victorians are already doing much to tackle the risks to biodiversity conservation in the state, but much remains to be done before we can truly say that we are caring for our environment. Despite our recognition of past failures, many species and communities are still in severe danger of extinction, and many processes continue to put species and communities at risk. Land degradation continues to be a major problem, especially in our rural areas.

The protection of streams and their catchments has been recognised as being of critical importance for the protection of water quality and the maintenance of our aquatic plants and animals. Biodiversity conservation is a key component of the integrated approach to natural resource management introduced by the Catchment and Land Protection Act 1994 and the Coastal Management Act 1995. This management system will be overseen by bodies representing the community, business and government.

Research also continues to be of great importance in gaining a better understanding of our ecosystems. For example, in most of Victoria’s terrestrial ecosystems, little is known of the distribution and ecology of invertebrates and non-vascular plants, although both clearly play important roles in the recycling of nutrients, and as prey or food for vertebrate animals. Our knowledge and understanding of aquatic ecosystems is also rudimentary, and we need to know much more about the processes that threaten them.

This booklet is the beginning of the path to the future. It sets the stage for Victoria’s Biodiversity Strategy by describing the broad ecosystems of the State through their geology, flora and fauna, and natural history, and briefly touches on the major risks to the communities and species within those ecosystems.

Understanding this magnificent natural heritage and learning the lessons of the past are the first steps towards ensuring that native plants and animals retain their full potential for evolutionary development in the wild, so that the future of our rich biodiversity is guaranteed.

The community — every one of us — has the opportunity to take an active role in the conservation of our rich natural heritage. Its future is in our hands.

Natural Ecosystems

The Alps

A mere 0.5% of mainland Australia is truly alpine. This region, above 1500 metres altitude, is one of the lowest alpine regions of the world. The Victorian Alps cover 500,000 ha in the east and north-east of the state, extending from the isolated plateaus of Lake Mountain and Baw Baw to the vast plains around the headwaters of the Murray River.

Formed during the Palaeozoic Age around 500 million years ago, the granite and sandstone peaks have been sculpted by glaciers and eroded by rainfall and snowmelt to form rounded mountain tops and plateaus. The gentle slopes are clothed in grasslands, herbfields, heathlands, woodlands and sphagnum bogs, each adapted to a particular combination of topography, soils and micro-climate. The highest regions of the alpine country support a rich mosaic of heathland, grassland and alpine bog communities, each adapted to particular combinations of topography, soils, water availability and microclimate. At slightly lower altitudes these ‘treeless islands’ give way to subalpine snow gum woodlands of White Sallee and Black Sallee. Climatic conditions are harsh, and the area is typically snow-covered for more than four months of the year. In spring and summer, nature explodes into the short growing season. Many species, such as the Flame Robin, migrate to the alps to exploit the abundant food resources, while millions of Bogong Moths complete one of the longest insect migrations in the world, to spend the summer in the cool of the alps. These become meals on wings to a wide variety of animals and link the ecology of the alps to areas hundreds of kilometres away.

Alpine plants and animals have evolved to cope with the extremes of their environment — low temperatures, high winds, snow cover for long periods, and seasonal inundation. As a result, many species and ecological communities are found only in the alpine area. They include several species at risk of extinction, such as the Baw Baw Frog, Alpine Water Skink, Mountain Pygmy-possum, Stirling Stonefly, Cushion Caraway and Small Star Plantain.

Today the Victorian Alps remain largely intact, with the majority of the area set aside as National Park. The uses need to be carefully managed so that alpine vegetation (particularly herbfields, sphagnum bogs and streams) are not damaged and fauna are not placed at risk.

As with much of Victoria, environmental weeds and pest animals pose a risk to the natural alpine environment. Climate change through global warming is a potential long-term risk to the flora and fauna of the alpine environment.

Grasslands

When the first Europeans arrived in western Victoria, the undulating plains supported grasslands. Other extensive grasslands occurred on the plains between the Murray Valley and the Great Divide (the Northern Plains) and in Gippsland. Where soils were deeper and more friable, or where burning had not been so frequent or severe, open grasslands gave way to grassy woodlands of River Red Gums, Yellow Gums, she-okes, bulokes and acacias. Aborigines used fire to maintain the open nature of the grasslands, and to stimulate the growth of useful plants and attract animals for hunting.

The grasslands lie over generally heavy clays which become waterlogged in winter but dry and crack in summer. In Gippsland and the Northern Plains they also lie over alluvial deposits. They are floristically rich, not only in grasses such as Kangaroo Grass (which is dominant south of the Divide) or wallaby-grasses and spear-grasses (abundant north of the Divide) but also in the colourful orchid, daisy, pea and lily families. In winter many grasslands form ephemeral flooded native meadows, silently waiting spring, when they burst into colour and ring with the voices of frogs and birds. A suite of rare animals, including the Bush Stone-curlew, Eastern Barred Bandicoot and Striped Legless Lizard, are adapted to life in these changeable environments.

Many grassland plants are adapted to frequent, low-intensity fire and grazing by native animals, and to wet winters and dry summers.

The rapid drying of the soil may help to explain the flush of spring and early summer flowering. The ability to withstand dry summers makes native grasslands and grassy woodlands on private land potentially beneficial in whole-farm management, as they are likely offer a more reliable source of feed during dry years than can introduced pasture species. Many native grasses may be suitable for seed production and pasture reinforcement. The biodiversity of native grasslands is therefore likely to be an important asset for agriculture in the future.

European settlers found that the expansive grasslands provided good grazing and were easy to convert to cropping and improved pasture. And because these grasslands carried almost no timber and had little or no value for gravel or water supplies, few areas were reserved. Today less than 1% of these magnificent grasslands remain, in small patchy remnants, and many are so small that their long-term viability is doubtful. Some of the larger remnants are on private land, especially where ploughing, fertilising, and sowing of exotic pasture plants have not occurred.

The major challenges in managing grassland remnants include weed invasion, subdivision and clearance, increased nutrient levels, lack of fire, accidental damage from vehicles, and sheep and cattle droving. Larger remnants, which are particularly important for animal populations, are at risk from subdivision and clearing, and from changes in agricultural practices, particularly pasture improvement.